> If his mother was 1/4 and the cut-off by Yup'ik tradition is 1/4 why was his
> grandmother an enrolled member but not his mother?
In the memorable words of Col. Nathan R. Jessep, "My answer is I don't have the first damn clue." Maybe his mother's calculations included ancestors from the seventy or so Alaskan Yup'ik communities not not affiliated with the Curyung Tribal Council. (I assume none of them were Siberian Yupii or we would have heard about it.) Maybe his mother had political differences with the Curyung leadership and opted against maintaining her council membership. Maybe Jeanette J. Lee, foolishly considering herself a reporter and not a statistician, rounded up from 0.2421875. Certainly I don't care (see below).
> Unless the Yup'ik who told me his mother was not enrolled was mistaken?
Maybe he is. Maybe Ms. Lee was not. Perhaps the opposite. How the hell should I know? You're the one citing an anonymous correspondent. Again, fortunately, I don't care.
> Am I to assume you have seen the tribal rolls or you were told by other
> Yup'ik that his mother is enrolled?
Why on Earth would you assume such a thing? I told you the source of my information, in the what I considered simple language and a straightforward fashion.
> He can claim anything he wants but unless a tribe agrees with him he's just
> someone with NDN ancestry like millions of other American's my SO included.
> It isn't how he identifies himself that matters but how the tribe identifies
> him.
He identifies with a particular group of Alaska natives, all of whom are culturally and politically distinct from "NDNs," and has never claimed any association with the latter. Please at least get that straight
Beyond that, I don't know that I'm really up for addressing claims that ethnicity depends upon recognition by a political authority. Like, getting tribal papers in your book resembles baptism for a Catholic convert?
What would you consider natives from unrecognized nations? We had something like a dozen groups of them in Virginia, several of which didn't even organize rudimentary governmental structures until recent decades.
Do those with tribal papers not count until the relevant tribes get federal papers, or are state papers a-okay in your book? How about tribal papers with no government papers backing them up?
What are people of predominantly Yup'ik ancestry who don't have a one-quarter blood quantum from a single tribal council?
-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."